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The two major stock indices closed at record highs Friday for the third straight day, marking six weeks of gains amid indications that the Federal Reserve will continue its stimulus policies. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 15961.70, up 85.48 points or 0.54%. The S&P 500 was up 7.56 points, or 0.42%, to 1798.18. Janet Yellen, the nominee to be the next Fed Chairman, said in a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday that she would continue the stimulus until the economy improves further. [CNBC]

(NEW YORK) — Investors stayed upbeat Friday, pushing U.S. stock indexes deeper into record territory. Stocks climbed to all-time highs for the third straight day as investors assessed the prospect for further economic stimulus from the Federal Reserve. Agilent Technologies, which makes scientific instruments, was the biggest gainer in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index after reporting earnings that exceeded analysts’ expectations. Exxon Mobil rose after billionaire Warren Buffett‘s company disclosed late Thursday that it had taken a stake in the oil company. The S&P 500 has advanced for six straight weeks, part of an impressive rise this year. The index is up 26.1 percent so far. If it ends 2013 with a gain that big it would be the best performance in a decade. Several factors have been driving the market higher this year. The Federal Reserve has kept up its extraordinary efforts to stimulate the economy. And while the U.S. economy’s recovery has been plodding, it has been strong enough to enable corporations to keep increasing their profits. “It’s bland, it’s vanilla, but it’s sweet,” said John Manley, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo Fund Management. Despite the surge, stock prices remain reasonable compared with earnings, Manley said. Stock valuations are “not cheap, but they’re not prohibitive,” he said. The ratio of stock prices to forecast earnings for S&P 500 companies is currently 15, according to data from FactSet. That’s slightly below the average ratio of 16.2 over the last 15 years and far below the peak of 25 recorded in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The S&P 500 added 7.56 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,798.18. All 10 of the industry groups in the S&P 500 rose. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 85.48 points, or 0.5 percent, to 15,961.70. The Nasdaq composite rose 13.23 points, or 0.3 percent, to 3,985.97. Agilent jumped $4.39, or 8.7 percent, to $54.93. Exxon Mobil, a member of the Dow, rose $2.05, or 2.2 percent, to $95.27. Investors may be getting more comfortable with the prospect of the Fed cutting back

(NEW YORK) — Activist investor Bill Ackman’s company has disclosed stakes in government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In regulatory filings on Friday, Pershing Square Capital Management LP said that it has a 9.98 percent stake in Fannie Mae and a 9.77 percent stake in Freddie Mac. Ackman’s company invests in and bets against a wide range of businesses. In August, Ackman resigned from J.C. Penney Co.’s board and sold Pershing’s entire 18 percent stake in the department store operator as part of a deal to resolve a public dispute between himself and the Plano, Texas, company. Last month Ackman reduced his short position against nutritional supplement maker Herbalife Ltd. Ackman had taken massive short positions on the company’s stock, meaning his fund would make money if the shares decline Earlier this month Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported strong third-quarter earnings as the U.S. housing market continues to recover. The government rescued Fannie and Freddie at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 when both veered toward collapse under the weight of losses on risky mortgages. Together the companies received taxpayer aid totaling $187 billion. The gradual recovery of the housing market has made Fannie and Freddie profitable again. Their repayments of the government loans have helped make this year’s federal budget deficit the smallest in five years. The two companies don’t directly make loans to borrowers. They buy mortgages from lenders, package them as bonds, guarantee them against default and sell them to investors. That helps make loans available. Ackman’s disclosure came two days after another investment firm, Fairholme Capital Management, offered to buy Fannie and Freddie’s core businesses from the government in a $52 billion deal. Miami-based Fairholme, led by Bruce Berkowitz, made the proposal to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie. Fairholme said it would lead a group of investors to buy the mortgage-bond guarantee businesses of the two companies. The firm said that would be sufficient to back about $1 trillion in new mortgages. The Obama administration is

There’s a reason why a lot of the world’s top investors, like Warren Buffett, don’t invest in technology—it moves too fast. And it’s too hard to track whether the hot stock or idea of today will be worth anything in five years. Buffett famously references the auto industry when he talks about his aversion to technology stocks. There were hundreds of car companies in the U.S. during the early part of the 20th century, but only a handful survived and made investors any money over the long haul. The big question is, are we in a bubble right now? First, my gut feeling. I’ll come clean here and share that back in 1999, I was actually recruited to join a Citigroup funded technology incubator in London called “Antfactory,” which aimed to invest in pan-European media plays. (Yes, I cringe as I write those four words.) The very fact that such firms were hiring journalists as partners was clearly the sign of a market top. And while there’s certainly more substance to many of today’s hot firms, like Twitter or Facebook, than there was to, say, Pets.com or many other iconic firms of the late 1990s, I do feel the same frothy enthusiasm in the market as investors put enormous valuations on firms which still don’t make any money. I also sense a lot of bubble like hubris from techies themselves. (MORE: ‘Candy Crush Saga’: The Science Behind Our Addiction) Beyond this, it’s a question of whether you believe in the business model of social media and online retail today, which is essentially a land grab that (hopefully) gets turned into profitability at some later date. The FT has done a lot of smart analysis and number-crunching on this. Their verdict: the jury is still very much out on the longer-term profit trajectory of the hot social media companies of the moment. And having ridden one dot-com bubble and bust, I’m personally sitting this one out. Joe Nocera, Charlie Herman and I explored this point as it relates to the technology

(NEW YORK) — Stocks edged higher in early trading on Wall Street Friday, pushing major indexes further into record territory. Agilent Technologies was the biggest gainer in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. The company, which makes scientific instruments, jumped $4.12, or 8.2 percent, to $54.66, after reporting earnings that exceeded analysts’ expectations. The stock market climbed to record levels this week, extending its gains for the year, after Janet Yellen, the nominee to succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve, made clear she that she was prepared to stand by the Fed’s efforts to support the U.S economy. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 37 points, or 0.2 percent, to 15,912 in the first half-hour of trading. The S&P 500 added two points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,792. The Nasdaq composite rose three points, or 0.1 percent, to 3,976. In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year note was unchanged at 2.70 percent from Thursday. In commodities trading, the price of oil rose 40 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $94.16 a barrel. Gold dropped $1.50, or 0.1 percent, to $1,287 an ounce. Among other stocks making big moves, Exxon Mobil rose $1.22, or 1.3 percent, to $94.44 after billionaire Warren Buffett’s company disclosed late Thursday that it had taken a new stake in the oil company.

After an important Communist Party plenum wrapped up on Tuesday, many observers (including myself) feared that the results showed President Xi Jinping was unwilling to launch the drastic reforms necessary to fix the economy. On Friday, more details emerged on what exactly Beijing’s top leaders approved during their conference, and the pledged reforms are much meatier and potentially more powerful than anything previously suggested, and tackle some of the worst ills of the economy. Most notably, there is finally talk about reforming China’s dominant state-owned enterprises, or SOEs. These behemoths suck up the nation’s resources and crowd out the private sector, though they are bloated, inefficient and hamper the development of the economy. Now Xi is planning to do something about that. Beijing pledged to end some monopolies, improve SOE management and allow the private sector to invest in projects with SOEs. Such steps could make SOEs more competitive and allow greater scope for more productive private enterprise. Xi also plans to liberalize prices on commodities like water and natural gas, as well as in transport and telecom; speed deregulation of interest rates and capital flows; reduce curbs on foreign investment; and allow private investors to set up small banks. All of this will expand the role of the private sector in the economy and permit resources to be allocated more intelligently. The concern earlier in the week was that Xi and his team seemed to dodge the reforms that were most pressing, either because they were unwilling to take on the special interests that would get hurt as a result, or they didn’t see the need or urgency. Now it is clear the Xi does appreciate the weaknesses of the Chinese economy – excess capacity, rising debt, a distorted financial sector, a lack of competition – and appears willing to confront them head on. However, what remains to be seen is how quickly these announced reforms will become reality, and how far they will really go. Some of this stuff has been talked about for a while – such as financial deregulation

McDonald’s acknowledged Thursday that their quick rollout of new menu items may have interfered with restaurant operations and slowed service in U.S. locations. Jeff Stratton, president of McDonald’s USA, said at an investor meeting that new products like the Egg White Delight McMuffin and pomegranate smoothies were introduced too fast, which “created challenges for the restaurants,” The Wall Street Journal reports. McDonald’s added four new menu items between March and July. To fix the service problems, McDonald’s is planning on remodeling fewer restaurants next year, and will instead invest in new preparation tables that can accomodate more ingredients and speed up the food prep process. [WSJ]

John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems, confirmed this week what many analysts had suspected following recent revelations about spying by the National Security Agency. Some customers are starting to think twice about buying American technology. Sales in China declined 18% in the latest quarter, at least partly because of fallout from the surveillance, he said. It’s a potentially significant development and one that is sure to increase concern among other technology executives. But it is also a highly complex situation that involves far more than meets the eye. China’s is displeased with a U.S. Congressional report last year that raised serious security concerns about two Chinese technology companies. The report all but killed any chance for Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. to sell their equipment for connecting phone calls and routing Internet traffic in the United States. Inevitably, China wanted to retaliate, said Christopher Tang, a business professor at University of California at Los Angeles who specializes in manufacturing and China. The NSA leaks, which started in May, were a convenient excuse to curtail spending on American technology and an opportunity to pressure U.S. officials on other trade issues. “It’s tit for tat,” Tang said. “This gives them an easy way out.” (MORE: Google Just Won One of Its Most Important Victories Ever) News about the NSA’s surveillance of data stored with U.S. technology companies or passing through their networks raised the alarm bells with many overseas firms. Articles based on classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, detailed the vulnerabilities in U.S. technology and, in some cases, significant cooperation by the companies involved. In recent months, several reports tried to quantify the financial risk to U.S. technology firms. They all highlighted the serious potential cost if customers – particularly those located overseas – stopped buying American and instead shopped elsewhere. Forrester Research estimated the cost to U.S. cloud providers, which store data like email, documents and customer information, could reach $180 billion annually. A separate study by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, an industry

After eight years of legal wrangling, a federal judge delivered a resounding victory for Google on Thursday by dismissing a lawsuit from the Authors Guild challenging the tech giant’s ambitious book-scanning project. In a landmark decision, Judge Denny Chin, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, found that Google Books is protected by the “fair use” principle of copyright law. In his opinion, Judge Chin wrote that the project “provides significant public benefits.” Google hailed the verdict — as did the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Computer & Communications Industry Association. “This has been a long road and we are absolutely delighted with today’s judgement,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “As we have long said Google Books is in compliance with copyright law and acts like a card catalog for the digital age giving users the ability to find books to buy or borrow.” The Authors Guild expressed chagrin at Judge Chin’s ruling and vowed to appeal. “We disagree with and are disappointed by the court’s decision today,” Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken said in a statement. “This case presents a fundamental challenge to copyright that merits review by a higher court. Google made unauthorized digital editions of nearly all of the world’s valuable copyright-protected literature and profits from displaying those works. In our view, such mass digitization and exploitation far exceeds the bounds of fair use defense.” When Google announced the book-scanning project in 2004, the idea captured the imagination of many in the tech world and academia. What if millions of books — including rare and out-of-print books — were made available on the Internet? Could the dream of a universal library — a mythical goal that has existed for two millennia since the destruction of the Library of Alexandria — finally be within reach? For Google, it was a typically grandiose endeavor, undertaken under the leadership of company co-founder Larry Page, who made the effort one of his signature projects. (MORE: New FCC Chief Tom Wheeler Faces Tech, Telecom, Political

What do a Catholic college in Connecticut, a popular outdoor apparel company, and the state of New Jersey have in common? They all seem to have nothing to do with beer, yet they all have craft beers created in their honor. It’s understandable that when craft beer companies hit major anniversaries, they want to celebrate—and perhaps milk the milestone for a boost in sales—by doing what they do best: producing unique craft beers. Last summer, for instance, theMendocino Brewery introduced a 30th Anniversary Ale to honor the company’s roots, which can be traced back to a brewpub opened in 1983 in northern California called the Hopland Brewery. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a major anniversary to prompt a brewer to roll out a commemorative concoction. This fall, Virginia’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery, which was founded in Richmond in 2011, introduced a “Belgian Style Tripel aged in Tequila Barrels” that’s been dubbed the Hardywood 2nd Anniversary Ale. But, in what’s surely another sign of craft beer’s runaway popularity, a trend has popped up in which companies, brands, and even geographic locations that have no direct ties to the brewing business are also celebrating anniversaries with (yep) their own craft beers. (MORE: Pumpkin Spice: It’s All About FOMO) Over the years, brewers have occasionally taken the initiative and honored brands and special cultural anniversaries with new craft beers. Brews have been created to celebrate the HBO show “Game of Thrones” and “Star Wars” characters. Delaware’s Dogfish Head, which has been named among the nation’s best craft brewers has released beers honoring the anniversaries of albums from Miles Davis (“Bitches Brew”) and Pearl Jam in recent years. Lately, everyone from a Major League Baseball team to a small college in Connecticut to an outdoor apparel company are simultaneously promoting their own special anniversaries and jumping on the craft beer bandwagon. The most recent example is Patagonia, which this week introduced an organic lager called California Route to celebrate the outdoor clothing company’s 40th year in business. Patagonia wasn’t foolish enough to

Google has confirmed reports it is investing $80 million in six solar facilities being built by Recurrent Energy in California and Arizona. The purchase is part of a $400 million deal with investment firm KKR, according to the Wall Street Journal. The plants are expected to be operational by January 2014, and will have a combined capacity of 106 MW, or enough to power more than 17,000 homes in the U.S., according to the tech giant. Google has pumped more than $1 billion into clean energy projects, from wind farms to powering its own data centers. [WSJ]

You’ve probably never heard of Metersbonwe, but in China, it is impossible not to know the casualwear brand. With about 5,000 outlets in the country, most of them under the Metersbonwe name, the Shanghai-based clothing retailer is just as omnipresent in the Middle Kingdom as the Gap is in America. Now the company’s founder, former tailor Zhou Chengjian, plans to go global, pledging to open stores in New York, Tokyo and London over the next three years. Zhou’s goal, he says, is to ensure that Metersbonwe has a “leading position for a mass-market brand” around the world. That would be an important step, not just for Zhou, but also for China. Though the Chinese manufacture a lot of stuff, only a couple of firms — PC giant Lenovo, appliance maker Haier — have internationally recognized consumer brands. Those bold enough to try have often struggled. Chinese sportswear maker Li Ning, for example, spent heavily to promote its brand to challenge behemoths Nike and Adidas, even hiring NBA superstar Dwyane Wade to market sneakers. But the Beijing firm has so far failed to woo international shoppers, and is even losing ground in its home market. Yet China badly needs brands in order to compete. With wages rising, Chinese companies are rapidly losing their low-cost edge over their Western competition, and in order to battle it out head-to-head with the U.S. and other advanced economies, brand power will prove critical. Building brands, however, won’t be easy. The management of Chinese companies is simply not experienced in the field. P.T. Black, a consumer strategist in Shanghai says Chinese executives are too fixated on production, and not enough on their customers, to make progress on branding. “There is a general weakness in what I call the humanities — an honest, committed interest in other people,” he says. “If you don’t consider your customer as the reason for doing things, you’re in trouble when building a brand.” Zhou agrees. “The reason why the Chinese brand is not very visible is that we’ve focused only on

If you haven’t heard of Candy Crush, it’s the mobile game that’s so addictive, players say they have left their children stranded at school, abandoned housework and even injured themselves as they try to reach new levels of the game. Candy Crush has been played 151 billion times since it launched as an app on mobile devices exactly year ago. And it’s the first game to ever be number one on iOS, Android and Facebook at the same time. Candy Crush’s creator, King, a Stockholm-based company, says one in every 23 Facebook users plays it. And while Candy Crush is free, the in-game purchases that some players choose to make add up.. Think Gaming, which releases gaming analytics, estimates that it takes in $875,382 per day. (By comparison, another insanely popular mobile game, Angry Birds, brings in an estimated $6,381 daily.) (MORE: Quiz: How addicted are you to Candy Crush?) All that adds up to some seriously distracted users. A survey by Ask Your Target Market (AYTM) polled 1000 players and found that 32 percent of them ignored friends or family to play the game. 28 percent played during work. 10 percent got into arguments with significant others over how long they played. And 30 percent said they were “addicted.” But there are lots of amusing games out there, so what’s so addictive about this one? We asked Tommy Palm, one of the game’s designers, what the King team did to get us hooked. We also called a few psychology experts and players to understand the back story on why their tactics worked so well.Here are the nine reasons they say Candy Crush is so irresistible: 1. It Makes You Wait Perhaps the most genius element of Candy Crush is its ability to make you long for it. You get five chances (lives) to line up the requisite number of candy icons. Once you run out of lives, you have to wait in 30-minute increments to continue play. Or, if you’re impatient, you can pay to get back in the game—which

(FREMONT, Calif.) — The San Francisco Bay Area Tesla factory where three workers were burned by hot metal was previously cited for a safety violation that led to an injury, a state official said Thursday. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined Tesla $2,700 last year for a serious violation at the Fremont factory that was uncovered during an accident investigation. Agency spokesman Peter Melton said investigators found a hydraulic power press did not have a proper stop control. At least one person was injured, but Melton did not know the extent of the injuries. Tesla was also fined for an accident at a different area facility two years ago in which a worker lost a fingertip. Two of the three Tesla Motors workers who were burned when a machine malfunctioned at the Fremont factory remained hospitalized on Thursday. One employee was seriously hurt and two others sustained minor injuries on Wednesday when a low-pressure aluminum casting press at the Fremont plant spilled hot metal, said Greg Siggins, a spokesman for Cal-OSHA. “Hot metal somehow burned the workers,” Siggins said. The most seriously injured worker sustained upper-body burns, Melton said. All three workers were taken to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose. Hospital spokeswoman Joy Alexiou said two remained hospitalized and one was released Wednesday. She declined to disclose their identities or conditions due to privacy laws. Tesla CEO Elon Musk visited the workers on Wednesday at the hospital. The incident was being treated as an industrial accident, Siggins said. “We will be talking to any witnesses, reviewing training documents and manuals to see if they are in accordance with specifications as part of finding out what happened,” Siggins said. Tesla Motors, headquartered in Palo Alto, makes its all-electric Model S sedan at the Fremont factory that was previously owned by General Motors and Toyota. Tesla took ownership of the plant four years ago and has transformed a portion of the cavernous site into a state-of-the-art facility. The latest accident followed recent Tesla car fires in

The S&P 500 continued its record rise Thursday following Federal Reserve Chair nominee Janet Yellen’s comments that she would continue the federal stimulus package. “It’s important not to remove support, especially when the recovery is fragile and the tools available to monetary policy, should the economy falter, are limited given that short-term interest rates are at zero,” Yellen said at the Senate Banking Committee hearing. The S&P 500 rose 0.5% to 1,790.62, a new record, while the Dow Jones Industrial average rose 54.59 points to 15,876.22, also a record, Bloomberg Businessweek reports. This is the fifth record for the Dow Jones in the last seven trading days. [Bloomberg]

H.J. Heinz Co. is closing three plants in North America and cutting 1,350 jobs in an effort to operate more efficiently. The food maker said Thursday that it will close facilities in two states and Canada over the next six to eight months. The cuts total 200 jobs in Florence, S.C., 410 jobs in Pocatello, Idaho and 740 employees in Leamington, Ontario, in Canada. Heinz will shift production from these locations to other existing facilities in the U.S. and Canada. The company also said it will invest in remaining facilities and add 470 positions at five factories in Ohio, Iowa, California and Canada. After the changes are complete, Heinz will employ approximately 6,800 hourly and salaried workers at sites across North America. This follows its decision in August to cut 600 jobs in North America. Heinz was acquired and taken private by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and 3G Capital earlier this year.

Victoria’s Secret showed off its latest designs at a fashion show Wednesday, and, no surprise, there were some extravagant and pricey items on display. But this pricey? Model Candice Swanepoel strutted down the runway wearing a $10 million “Royal Fantasy Bra,” the most recent incarnation of the retailer’s annual tradition of highest-end “fantasy bras.” She told ABC earlier that the bra—$2 million belt included—comprises 4,200 gems, with a 52-karat ruby. The fashion show, to be aired on CBS Dec. 10, was a star-studded event complete with a performance by Taylor Swift and appearances from models Cara DeLevingne and Behati Prinsloo among others. (MORE: Did Google Basically Just Ruin YouTube?) But investors may want to take note. The iconic brassieres have varied in value over the past two decades, and an analysis by CNBC suggests the bra’s price tag in a given year may well be a good indicator for the stock market. In fact, prices for the “fantasy bras” tracked the S&P 500 index up or down every year since 1996 except once, in 2003. During the booms, prices soared, including the record $15 million “Red Hot Fantasy Bra” (not terribly safe for work) in 2000. During the busts, prices fell: this year’s $10 million value is the highest since 2005. To be sure, it’s not the bra market determining these prices. The unidentified person who purchased last year’s $2.5 million bra is the only buyer to date, according to CNBC.

(LONDON) — Barclays bank plans to cut 1,700 jobs from its network of British branches, about 5 percent of the total workforce. Britain’s second-largest bank says it is seeking to make the cuts through voluntary buy-outs. It currently employs 33,600 people at 1,577 branches in Britain. Barclays said “the way in which our customers access their banking services is changing rapidly,” with people using computers and smartphones for everyday banking and paying fewer visits to branches. The bank said in a statement Thursday that “as a result of technological changes, we will be able to provide better service for our customers with fewer staff.” The Unite trade union called the job cuts among cashiers, branch managers and other staff “a colossal mistake.”

(BERLIN) — Germany’s Volkswagen AG issued a global recall Thursday for 800,000 of its Tiguan models, saying it needs to replace a problematic fuse that can cause the cars’ lights to fail. The Wolfsburg-based company said the replacement should only take minutes and concerns vehicles built between the start of 2008 and the middle of 2011. VW also asked the owners of 1.6 million vehicles sporting seven-speed, dual-clutch gearboxes to come in for an oil exchange. The company said that models with the DQ200 gearbox, which include the Golf, can suffer electric malfunctions in hot, humid climates, if synthetic oil is used. Spokesman Pietro Zollino said the gearbox problem was a “minor issue” but for legal reasons the recall was compulsory in China, where some 750,000 vehicles are affected.